Wagner opera pulled after Nazi scenes repel audience

Catherine Hickley

BERLIN: A new staging of Richard Wagner's opera Tannhaeuser set during the Holocaust was cancelled after some scenes so upset audience members at the Dusseldorf opera house that they sought medical attention after the performance.

The Deutsche Oper am Rhein said the opera would now be performed only in concert, ditching the staging. In a statement it said the decision was made after "some scenes, particularly a very realistic shooting scene, clearly affected numerous audience members so strongly both psychologically and physically that they had to seek medical help afterward".

The staging provoked an outcry at its May 4 premiere, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger reported. The opening scene depicted Tannhaeuser as a concentration camp guard, shooting newly arrived Jewish prisoners, the paper said.

Other scenes depicted death in gas chambers, suicide by self-immolation, rape and other brutalities, Der Spiegel magazine reported. The premiere audience gave their verdict with loud boos, the Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger said.

Wagner's opera is more traditionally set in medieval Germany in a time of troubadours and picturesque castles. The hero is a singer who has fallen from grace for spending too much time on the mountain of love with Venus. In Dusseldorf, she morphed into a dominatrix.

The director, Burkhard Kosminski, declined to make changes to the relevant scenes, the statement said.

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"Of course – and for legal reasons too – we will respect the freedom of the artist," the opera house said.

It is not the first time an opera has been taken off the stage in Germany for fear of upsetting audiences. In 2006, the Deutsche Oper in Berlin canceled performances of Mozart's Idomeneo after officials warned it risked offending Muslims.

The production, directed by Hans Neuenfels, ended with a blood-spattered King Idomeneo placing the four severed heads of Poseidon, Jesus, Buddha and Mohammed on chairs.